Earl and Tim:
As I said earlier, much care must be had in handling this. As to his humanity, Jesus is passible and mutable. But the Logos, the eternal Son of God is not, as Shedd wrote, "The trinitarian personality of the Son of God did not begin at the incarnation, but the theanthropic personality of Jesus Christ did. It is the divine nature, and not the human, which is the base of Christ's person. The second trinitarian person is the root and stock into which the human nature is grafted. The wild olive is grafted into the good olive, and partakes of its root and fatness" (DT, II, 269).
This is why Jesus, in the hypostatic union, could not sin, or, as we say, he was impeccable. It did not mean that the sinless humanity that was added to deity was impeccable as such, with reference only to humanity, but in union with deity it was. Think of Jesus humanity as a malleable copper wire, able to sin and not to sin as was Adam in his original, yet unglorified, state. This copper wire, however, was, as it were, welded to a steel beam, and though it in itself could be bent, yet the beam to which it was welded could not be bent: in the integrity of His theanthropic person, our blessed Lord was impeccable, not simply sinless, but not capable of sinning. A glorified humanity, such as we will be in our heavenly estate, is also not capable of sinning. But Jesus never was able to sin, even in an unglorified, though sinless, humanity, because such humanity susbsisted with deity in the hypostatic union.
Please note that this is the communicatio idiomatum in concreto. I am not suggesting that there is a communication of attributes such that the deity transforms the humanity, as it does for our Lutheran friends, allowing for sacramental ubiquity. At the same time, it is not just Calvinists, or Antiochenes, contra the Lutherans, but historic Christianity that teaches that the incarnation does not limit the Logos, the finite not able to contain the infinite.
Much more could be said here, but the bottom line is that, and here's what people generally miss, He who was God fully retained ALL HIS ATTRIBUTES AS GOD (though coming down from His glory and voluntarily unknowing of certain things) and at the same time was a man who tired and hungered and was no superman but made in the likeness of sinful flesh, yet without sin. One commonly hears that believers tend to Docetism or the other heresies (Apollinarianism, monophysitism, etc.) that deny his humanity. Perhaps. I know that we struggle to understand what it means that He was a man. But I think more than that we tend to err by not really holding to all that it means that He is fully God and fully man. To say simply that Jesus was passible is to make this error. Much more reading and thinking and praying if one wishes to graps this.
While we can say that Jesus Christ is passible in his humanity and impassible in his deity, we can never say, Earl, simpliciter, that Jesus was ever passible. That's what started this thread, the statement to the effect that "Jesus was passible in his ministry 2000 years ago." Only insofar as he was also impassible, impeccable, and immutable as God. This is a vast mystery, second only to how it is that, as the Athanasian Creed says: The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; but there are not three Gods, but only One God. Jesus is God and man in one person from His incarnation forward and we can never leave out any of that reality. The Wesley's Christology, by the way, was deficient. He neither "emptied Himself of all but love," nor did He "leave the Father's throne above" without further qualification. Athanasius on the Incarnation is another wonderful, devotional exploration of these beautiful truths.
Peace,
Alan
